


for want of the rose and its thorn

by nominormiracle



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: F/F, i shot for character study got metaphor-riddled sex instead?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 12:47:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15685728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nominormiracle/pseuds/nominormiracle
Summary: “Why should you forever be alone?”The harlot’s thumb traced freely across Isabella’s cheek, dipping into its hollow before resting gently upon the flat of her jaw.Isabella could think of a dozen reasons. My brother’s hand holds my neck, my purse, dangles me above a precipice which-- as a child-- I could not bear to name. I haven’t the strength to press his bruises blue or to tend my own.I haven’t even the strength to touch you.





	for want of the rose and its thorn

“Why should you forever be alone?” 

 

The harlot’s thumb traced freely across Isabella’s cheek, dipping into its hollow before resting gently upon the flat of her jaw. 

 

Isabella could think of a dozen reasons.  _ My brother’s hand holds my neck, my purse, dangles me above a precipice which-- as a child-- I could not bear to name. I haven’t the strength to press his bruises blue or to tend my own.  _

 

_ I haven’t even the strength to touch you. _

 

That which had stilled some twenty-five years ago-- which had once thrilled meekly at the ankles of fellow ladies-to-be, even the occasional young governess whose hands instructed and distracted her at fourteen-- stirred again. Through the thick, concave caging of her bodice, the skin over her thrumming heart dismayed at the slight span between her own heaving chest and Charlotte’s. 

 

“Let me break his spell,” Charlotte murmured. Gone was the teasing, the  _ notorious C.W.  _ who immediately fascinated Isabella upon her surprise arrival in her parlor. The softened eyes, wet with something akin to understanding (though how could Charlotte, whose strength stunned Isabella’s senses, know her weakness) were not those that asked her just days before: “Is there anything else you wanted?” 

 

She had stuttered then, tempted into a request perhaps both more illicit than the one Charlotte had in mind.  _ Please, ask me about anything. I would tell you all of it if you’d keep looking at me.  _ Instead, she said nothing, only froze as Charlotte leaned into her, wafting the menacing fragrance of Quigley’s Golden Square, though Isabella thought she might detect something baser, wilder underneath those wretched airs. 

 

The kiss against her cheek stung, as though she’d entered a forbidden garden only to find herself punished by a wasp living in the most beautiful bloom. Like a gift and a threat, she had responded with a click of her spine, remembering her height over the younger woman, invited (nay, demanded) her presence at the next day’s card party.  _ And bring the bitch _ . She had missed Charlotte’s flushed smile, but felt it as keenly as the sting as she returned to her carriage, somehow victorious. 

 

This kiss was itself a kind of bruise. Isabella felt herself blooming in shades of blue against Charlotte’s pink mouth and light hand, raising her own to intertwine their fingers. She had wanted once… and Harcourt had robbed her of it, unwritten it from her skin before she even learned to speak its language. Now, there was silence, but also vocabulary-- words like  _ touch _ ,  _ skin _ ,  _ please _ rose like spectres between the two women. Isabella thought that she might reach out and grasp them or-- simply-- grasp Charlotte whose other arm soon encircled the slim of her waist. 

 

Though technically enclosed in Charlotte’s grip, Isabella was not encaged. For the first time in her life she was only trapped by what she desired, not what she despised. Charlotte inched as close as their pooled skirts would allow, weaving the fingers of one hand into the baby hairs below Isabella’s wig, the other tugging at her waist with patient intention. Isabella opened her eyes, drawing shallow breaths which only rendered her sight foggier, her tongue heavier. She gazed deeply, drinking in Charlotte’s light eyes then tracing down past now-familiar rosebud lips, to a long, white neck, and finally a blushing chest. 

 

Isabella allowed herself the indulgence of  _ looking _ . Once, so long ago now, she had played at courtship with other young ladies, had begrudgingly (and perhaps excitedly) danced the lord’s part for her more forward friends. Back then, she averted her eyes, nervous of their unnatural inclinations towards bare skin, letting herself only glance, never devour. 

 

But now? It seemed her eyes might never tire of drinking it all in, of imagining what lay beneath the lacing of Charlotte’s gown, how a leg might taper, a hip jutting just so. Isabella, irrevocably marred as she was, never thought much of her own body except to exact her personal little punishments.  _ You must find a weakness and you must press _ . Charlotte could not know how she laid waste to her own body, let a comb pull through her hair till blood rose or how harshly she dragged nails over the skin of her belly, tearing at the whitened marks where her damnation once swelled. It was Isabella’s singular secret, the only one she truly kept to herself: how she lay in bed, stiff and unable to sleep, letting the ragged corner of a thumbnail bring purple hues to the surface. 

 

As though awoken from a stupor, Isabella noticed, at last, the how Charlotte’s hands had traveled downward, grasping each of her own. The younger woman stood slowly, pulling Isabella’s shaky figure upward despite the protestations of her trembling legs. 

 

“It’s not nearly private enough here for what I want to give you. Let me take you upstairs.” Isabella thought of the numbered rooms above their heads, how their spaces must be filled, day in and day out with the treachery of men seeking the services of girls like Charlotte. Before she could help herself, she bristled. 

 

“I haven’t any money to repay you for your time...Already I’ve asked too much of you.” Isabella looked down, missing the flare of emotion in Charlotte’s eyes. 

 

“You ask nothing of me and I’ve asked too much of you. And yet I can’t help but want to give what I can to you. At the moment, I can think of only one thing in particular, my lady.” Charlotte bowed her head just slightly, smirking as she raised her gaze to Isabella’s once again. 

 

_ Tease _ .  _ Press. _

 

Isabella extended her hand, which Charlotte grasped lightly. She led the both of them to the dark stair between the den and the parlor, slowly climbing ascent, turning each second to look back, as though afraid Isabella might disappear at any moment. At the end of the upstairs hall was a room, powder blue and unremarkable until Charlotte entered it. Isabella stood for a moment within the door’s frame, simply observing how Charlotte’s presence turned the room extraordinary. She was extraordinary. 

 

Even more extraordinary, still, as she stopped in the room’s center at the foot of the sturdy bed. “Isabella. Come here.” And like the disobedient hand reached toward the flower, Isabella came to her. 

 

They kissed and kissed-- wildly, gently, recklessly. Isabella’s mouth grew wet with their kisses, and more often it was she who chased when Charlotte’s chin dipped. She hardly cared for breath, what good could it do when she had not yet lived till now. Isabella’s touch grew braver, gliding down the small of Charlotte’s back until it reached the padding which sat above what Isabella could only dream about in her younger years.

 

Charlotte pulled back, raising deft hands to pull at the pins in Isabella’s wig. Tenderly, she removed each one, sliding the wig backward to reveal the dark, natural curls underneath. Placing the wig upon the side table, Charlotte ran her hands languorously through the now-shorter hair. The tenderness of her fingertips running along the self-inflicted wounds hidden at her crown left Isabella unable to stand. Before her knees buckled, Charlotte led her atop a small stool before the fireplace. Meticulously, she began unlacing Isabella’s dress, pulling down the gown and the unknotting the hip pads in one seemingly smooth motion. Soon, garters and chemise went as well, leaving Isabella’s pale skin pale blue in the moonlight.

 

In another life, she might’ve teased Charlotte for her staring. And stare, she did. Unabashedly recording each inch of newly uncovered flesh. Her sight lingered at Isabella’s breasts, the darkened nipples pulled taut against the night’s chill, and the wiry hair that grew in curls between her legs. 

 

Isabella stood on shaky knees, reaching for the stays in Charlotte’s gown. Either from lack of practice, or sheer impatient desire, she fumbled with the complex layers. Charlotte covered her hands with her own, methodically undoing the laces and letting the garments fall one after the other to the floor until finally she was bare herself. 

 

Isabella returned the favor, as she was wont to do for Charlotte Wells.  _ Brings new definition to the Lord’s ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ _ . Each stare she mirrored with a long-dormant intensity. What would the Lord know of how her eyes moved steadily lower, gazing at last at that dark juncture beneath the woman’s hips. 

 

So many years ago, after entertaining her parents’ company as she was obligated, Isabella would crawl into her large bed, left at last to her own devices. Before the damnation, that V between her legs had simply been a mystery, a blank space onto which she might project a look from earlier that day from her friend, Emma, whose fingers tapered just so as she played the piano in the banquet hall. Isabella dare not touch it with her own hand, but would let her bare thighs rub ever so slightly against one another and imagine  _ something _ . What, then, she wasn’t sure.

 

She might have some inkling now as Charlotte slowly paced towards her, backing her onto the bed’s thick duvet. The harlot’s slender legs bracketed her hips, some wet heat sliding over her thigh. The smell, which had lingered under Charlotte’s affected perfumes the other day, now filled the air between them. A touch earthy, it smelled again of the imagined garden-- and underneath it the threatening sting of want. 

 

“Can I touch you further?” Charlotte exhaled against Isabella’s ear. Each breath was a sigh, carrying a hint of the other woman’s own yearning. 

 

“Yes. Anywhere you like.”  _ Anything you’d like.  _

 

Charlotte pressed short and long kisses against the column of Isabella’s throat, brushing teeth against the underside of her jaw. Then came her knowing tongue, which stoked the persistent ache at her core with equal parts insistence and gentleness. If desire was a thing like water, then Charlotte was the river Thames, pulling Isabella’s body ceaselessly away from London, from Harcourt and her menacing court of fiends.  

 

She returned to Isabella’s mouth, her hands sliding up the slight curve of a belly to brush the sides of her breasts. Like a lamp’s bulb suddenly shattered by the heat of illumination, one soft touch of her nipple sent Isabella’s back arching. Charlotte smiled then, teeth glinting, then lowered her head to Isabella’s chest, taking the other nipple into her mouth. Isabella could hardly stand the attention, squirming up into rapture of Charlotte’s hips. Again, there was that heat, which Isabella pressed into as though judging the limits of a newly-bloomed bruise. 

 

Charlotte’s back bowed and groaned low into Isabella’s chest. Isabella adored the timbre of her voice, the suggestive husk of her accent, so different from her own. Again, she pressed that spot and Charlotte’s hips answered, more joltingly this time. 

 

“Do you feel that...what you’ve done to me, Isabella?” Charlotte spoke through a kind of stupor, as though she were coming up for breath after a deep dive. Isabella flamed and, emboldened by the words, brought her right hand slowly down Charlotte’s smooth back to rest upon her ass. “I can feel nothing else,” she whispered back, meeting Charlotte’s hazy gaze. 

 

At that, something snapped in the younger woman. She collapsed against Isabella, bringing their torsos together in one elongated line. Heat, everywhere heat, like none Isabella had ever known. Charlotte brought her mouth back to a pebbled nipple, but her hand wandered once again. Tip-toeing over her stomach, and the fine little hairs that spanned from her belly button to her sex, before finally running through the hair that adorned her mound. When Charlotte felt the answer liquid heat there, she groaned once again: “I can feel you now as though you’re already inside me.” The image conjured another full-body shudder in Isabella.  _ Press. Please. _

 

And press, she did. Charlotte’s two fingers, once teasing, now confidently spread Isabella’s lower lips, swiping downward and then up again through the thickening heat within. “If I go to far, you’ll tell me and I’ll stop,” Charlotte said and Isabella nodded. 

 

Those two fingers came to a spot just above where the midwife had cut her decades ago and brushed the very source of her aching. The touch, not unlike a wasp’s sting, not unlike bliss, radiated into Isabella’s thighs and stomach until each of her limbs seemed in tune with Charlotte’s movements. Her body began and ended with the other woman’s touch; and at last there was no silver-capped cane against her neck, no proprietary hand of a hovering Harcourt. Just that touch, which moved in slow strokes over what she now realized was a small nub above her opening. 

 

Charlotte’s circling, incessant and incandescent, pulled Isabella maddeningly closer to something as yet unknowable, but enticing all the same. Charlotte rest her lips in the hollow of her neck, alternating between long sucks and tiny, affectionate bites, which Isabella knew she would feel like phantom touches in the days to come. One of her fingers widened its arc, pressing just barely at the tensing entrance below. She paused.

 

“Can I?” Isabella considered what it would mean to have Charlotte inside her, to feel that connection, the one she had simply toyed with during their first meetings, become one with its source. She looked up at the younger woman, who gazed down at her with attentive, yet sheened eyes. Isabella nodded. 

 

Charlotte slid the tip of just one finger up and down the ring of muscle, then through it,  _ inside _ , to where Isabella dripped for her and all matter of mysticism and euphemism was lost. A spell broken? Yes, and wholly different one cast. Isabella made a noise for the first time, her halted breath escaping in a thin whimper. Charlotte kissed her once, deeply, on the lips and then brought her mouth downward to where she pressed at Isabella from the inside out. “How you feel, I didn’t know… Gorgeous.” Charlotte spoke now against her hip, but Isabella heard the words all the same. Swallowing, she looked down to where Charlotte’s mouth hovered above her sex. 

 

When this kiss came it was neither sting nor thorn nor petal nor bruise. Like nothing Isabella had ever dared imagine for herself, the softness of Charlotte’s tongue between her legs brought stillness to her mind, while she shivered all over. Her sounds came easily now, one moan bleeding into the next as Charlotte licked expertly at the ache’s source. Again, the indescribable feeling built within her, tightening and pulsing outward from her toes to her finger tips. Then, with one last firm  _ press _ , Isabella came undone, her thighs jerking, her wetness pooling below where Charlotte devoured each pulse. 

Isabella’s body settled at last and only then did Charlotte slowly remove her finger, which-- Isabella was only slightly embarrassed to notice-- now shimmered with her slick. 

 

Charlotte raised her mouth to Isabella’s, resuming their initial position. “The taste of you. It’s not unlike…” Charlotte searched for the word for a moment. “Nectar, perhaps?” Isabella whispered back. “I thought I was the nectar,” Charlotte joked, bringing her forehead down against Isabella’s. 

 

“Yes. Yes you are.”  _ The nectar, the rose, the thorn, the wasp, the sting, and the soothe _ .

 

Isabella’s hips slotted between Charlotte’s thighs, brushing that heat once again. The younger woman pursed her lips, stunned into silence. Isabella started, “May I….” 

 

“Isabella, touch me.” Charlotte’s eyes closed as Isabella slid one hand down to cup the wild of dark hair she had spent long seconds admiring by the firelight. “Inside, please.” Charlotte’s brow furrowed, as though some unanswerable question vexed her, but Isabella understood now. She let two fingers slide lower and then  _ curl _ . Her fingertips bumped over the ridged inner walls and Charlotte jumped in response. “Again,” she pleaded, her voice thinner now, ragged at the edges. 

 

Isabella thrust against the woman’s undulating hips, letting the heel of her palm press into the aching center. At the first spasm from within, Isabella drew breath, drew words with which to touch another, to name this desire. Charlotte came in long waves, stuttering out Isabella’s name against her neck. Isabella let the words fall through her fingers like water. None were needed now, after all.

 

Charlotte went limp above her. Isabella made to withdraw her hand, but Charlotte grasped her wrist. “No, let me feel you just a moment longer.” Her body slackened, relaxed for perhaps the first time in her entire life, Isabella pressed light kisses against Charlotte’s lips, cheeks, eyelids, nuzzling her nose into the unruly curls. “Spell’s broken then,” Charlotte muttered, tiredly. 

 

“You’ve cast an entirely different one, I’m afraid.” Charlotte grinned in response, lifting off Isabella’s finger to wipe the both of them down. Sleepy, and sated, Isabella curled into Charlotte’s assured touch around her waist, falling asleep more easily than she had in years.

 

Tomorrow, she would face Harcourt and his cold wrath in the form of a silver-capped cane or pointed accusation. But for now she had learned to love the wasp’s sting for what it was: the pricking of desire, a kiss against each of her many bruises. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> dare me to write another one of these i guess. lmao. fyi that this has not been spell-checked so apologies for any odd bits and ends throughout.


End file.
